Cervical cancer could be eliminated globally by the year 2100.

Cervical cancer could be eliminated globally by the year 2100.

Just let that sentence sink in for a minute.

That’s huge.

No, it’s not in most of our lifetimes. But it is in the lifetime of this generation’s children.

A new study by Cancer Council NSW has found cervical cancer has the potential to be eliminated as a public health problem by the end of the century…in most countries…in the world.

This will get you up to speed with everything you need to know about cervical cancer. Post continues after video.

It is the fourth most common cancer in women, and the leading cause of cancer death in some of the world’s poorest countries.

So how will they eliminate it?

Cancer Council says widespread global coverage of the HPV vaccination and cervical screening from 2020 will put us on the track to achieving this.

The combination of these two preventative measures could potentially prevent up to 13.4 million cases by 2070 and then go on to completely eradicate the cancer.

This incredible news comes after last year’s announcement that Australia is on track to be the first country in the world to eliminate cervical cancer as a health problem thanks to our successes with the preventative measures mentioned above.

In 2017 we made changes to the National Cervical Screening Program, and they’re working.

Australia is expected to remove it as a health problem by 2035, if vaccination and screening rates continue as they are now.

“This is the kind of news that every cancer researcher lives for,” said Cancer Council Australia chair Professor Karen Canfell.

“It’s incredibly exciting for women all over the world. However we are only in the early stages of the push towards elimination.

“Implementation efforts towards achieving global scale-up of screening and vaccination have just begun,” said Professor Canfell.

The day’s news – quickly. Post continues after this podcast.

The way Cancer Council have landed on this date 81 years in the future is by quantifying the impact of two steps:

• The rapid dispatch and administration of HPV vaccines to 80-100% of the world’s population of young girls.
• Alongside the effective delivery of twice-per-lifetime HPV based screening in less developed countries, with a 70 percent coverage rate.

But, if we don’t act now on this crucial two-step-process it’s predicted they’ll be 44.4 million cervical cancers in the next fifty years.

Just over 30 percent of young females in developed countries have received the HPV vaccine, but in less developed regions that figure sits at three percent.

So there’s a long way to go, but the World Health Organisation is on board – they recently announced a call-to-action for the elimination of  this cancer, with the intent to submit an elimination strategy at the World Health Assembly in May 2020.

The findings of this research out of New South Wales shows scaled-up global vaccination is the answer to transforming the world for young girls and their future families.